Choice

This is more than about termination of unwanted pregnancies, people. WAKE UP and pop your bubble of hate and ignorance! 

Do you have friends or family that are wanting to expand their families through IVF?  Well, you go ahead and tell them they can't, that it's wrong, and that you support the state banning them from creating children to add to their families that way.  Go ahead.  Crush their dreams of being parents.  While you're at it, since you're so pro-life, why don't you get pregnant and then give them your baby? 

Do you have a friend or family member who could die if they continued to carry the baby they are carrying because of a medical condition that makes pregnancy dangerous?  Are you willing to tell them, their partner, their other children, that this baby's life is more important and that if they both end up dying, you are more than ok with that?  You go right ahead and do that. You tell them their life isn't worth it.  You tell their families that you are ok that they can go ahead and die because a termination is not right for YOU.  Never-mind their own lives.  It's all about you.  After all, you'll be there for their families after they're dead, right?

Do you have a friend or family member that was happily expecting a baby only to find out that baby will die because of fatal diagnosis?

Yes....Yes, you do. That friend or family member was ME!!!!!!

Will you be there to tell them it's wrong to terminate to protect their other family members from the pain of the death of a child?  Will you be there to support them if they CHOOSE to carry to term, like I did?  Will you be there to watch their child suffer?  Will you be there to fight for that child's rights to be comfortable when a hospital, who was against termination, doesn't want to give comfort measures when your child is in pain?  Will you be there to fight for that child's right to be fed when the hospital tells the parents that feeding the "abnormal" child would "only be prolonging the inevitable"?  Will you be there to fight for that child's right to be kept warm when the hospital disagrees?  When the hospitals disagree to basic human comfort measures for a child THEY deem as not worthy of living, but were against termination during the pregnancy?  Guess what?  If you say you will be, you're probably lying.  Will you be there to pay for the medical bills from that child's short life?  Will you be there to pay for the funeral?  Will you be there to pay for the headstone?  Will you be there to pay for time out of work for maternity leave and grief?  Will you pay for psychologists for both your friend and their children to cope with the death?  Will you be there to cook meals, listen, support, and remember their child not just for a few weeks, but FOREVER?  Chances are, NO, because death makes people uncomfortable. So why should it EVER be YOUR choice when it comes to someone else's life?

North Dakota Assault on Women/Families

April Fool's...

April Fool’s

I love a good prank.  I have a great sense of humor and anyone who knows me, knows how much I love to laugh.  I've been the prankster, had them done to me, and still giggle about them.  I've sticky-note bombed my husband’s vehicle, put Icy-Hot under door handles of friends’ vehicles, and put a rubber band around the spray nozzle on the sink.  I've silly stringed, whoopee cushioned, and booby trapped my fair share of birthdays (my favorite day to prank someone) and April Fool’s days away, all in good fun, and I've always helped clean up any messes incurred with my pranks. 

I love a good, innocent physical prank.  Safe, silly, physical pranks can be epic, remembered for a lifetime, and fun for all involved.

But I draw the line when it comes to emotional pranks.  Emotional pranks….Can set loose an avalanche and if you don’t care what that avalanche causes to others for the sake of your “prank”, you need to think about what it means to care for others.

An emotional prank is anything that plays on the emotional side of your victims you’re engaging.  The one that gets to me the most is the way over done “I’m pregnant” prank.  You know the one – on April Fool’s Day, women around the country post/call/text/announce that they are expecting a child, some even give a due date, usually on a day that doesn't exist, such as the 31^st day of November.  Some only play this prank on their husbands, even going as far as getting a pregnant friend to pee on a pregnancy test for them (I know people who have done this), and some play it on everyone they know.  Then the next day, they admit it was an April Fool’s joke, all in jest, good times, ha ha, the end.

Only….not so much.  For me and so many other mothers of babies who have died and mothers who struggle to conceive or carry healthy children, this joke is like a knife through the heart.  We take pregnancy announcements very seriously.  We wish nothing but the best for friends announcing pregnancies because of everything we’ve been through.  The minute we see that announcement, we worry for you, we genuinely care for your baby, we pray for you and your baby.  When we find out the announcements were a hoax and not true at all, it’s incredibly painful to us.  We simply cannot understand why anyone would ever joke about something so precious as a life.  Our emotions heightened in concern for you and your fake baby, for nothing.  Our hearts abused, betrayed for your joke.  It’s not so funny when it’s your heart being ripped open.

I can hear some of you now – “oh calm down, have a sense of humor, it’s just a joke, it’s April Fool’s Day it’s to be expected”.  Ok, fine.  All for a joke, ha ha, I get it.  Here’s some food for thought for you.  If someone were to announce on April Fool’s Day for a joke that they were diagnosed with cancer.  Or their mother died.  Or they were in a serious car accident and paralyzed from the waist down.  

Would that be funny to you?

This is how those of us “Baby Loss Mommas”, or BLMs for short, feel about the April Fool’s Pregnancy joke.  Please, consider the emotional repercussions of your April Fool's jokes this year and be compassionate in your pranks.  It is possible (and so much more fun for everyone) to play a good prank on someone without toying with fragile emotions.